FIFA 17 scouting guide: Player types

It’s easier to scout strikers than it was in FIFA 16 – but searching for ‘Attacker’ still won’t get you any

There is some variation based on a player’s position, even within the same player type

Welcome to the FIFA 17 scouting guide!

The only guide you need to understand youth scouting in FIFA 17

New to scouting in FIFA games and wondering what it’s all about? Or maybe you’re a seasoned scout and want to know what’s changed in FIFA 17? Whatever your situation, my guides will help you become a pro at scouting the next generation of superstars.

This guide will explain what each player type means and what type of players you’ll get if you search for each one. If you want to know where the best places are to scout, how to spot the best players, how to use the player training feature and more, head over to my FIFA 17 scouting guide hub page – I’ll be adding more guides soon, so keep checking back.

Before we get started, a quick note: a player’s position is often as important as his type. Wide players with the ‘attacker’ player type now seem to be faster than attacking midfield ‘attacker’ types, for example. This ‘positional awareness’ of different scouted player types, as it were, is a big improvement on previous xanax online sale FIFA games – sprint speed and acceleration are now among wingers’ best stats, as opposed to the sluggish-but-skilled wide players we’ve been cursed with over the past few years.

Anyway, let’s dive in and examine the different player types that you can scout.

Any

Although it’s not a player type, it’s worth mentioning the ‘any’ category. Looking for this means you scout won’t narrow his searches for one particular player type, and will bring you back all sorts of different players.

It also means that your scout’s experience rating is irrelevant. Experience determines how likely your scout is to find the player type you’re after (more in part 1 of my FIFA 17 scouting guide, but if you tell your scout not to worry about player types then obviously his experience doesn’t matter.

That means that if you want to save a bit of cash and aren’t looking for any particular player type, you can hire a scout with good judgment but a lower experience rating and won’t be negatively affected.

Attacker

With ‘attacker’, your scout will find you two main types of player: wide players and wingers; and central midfielders and central attacking midfielders. Unfortunately, he won’t find you any strikers though. This has been a problem for years in FIFA games, but if you want to find some strikers, tell you scout to look for ‘physically strong‘, ‘technically gifted‘ or ‘winger‘ players.

Attackers who play on the wings tend to be pretty fast, and their finishing is usually their best technical attribute. They’re basically wide strikers, so can do well if you play them up front rather than on the wing.

Attackers who play on the wing usually have decent pace

Attacking midfielders with the attacker player type have more balanced technical stats, with good dribbling and long shots as well as finishing. They’re well suited to the attacking midfield position, but a little training on their passing will make them even better.

I wouldn’t recommend you keep central midfielders with the attacker type, though. That’s because they have good stats for a striker, but their passing and defending stats are very poor. That will give them a very low OVR, so there’s little chance of them ever hitting their potential. They’re mispositioned and aren’t well suited to central midfield.

Defensive minded

This will land you three different types of player: full backs, defensive midfielders and central midfielders. Once again there’s a glaring omission – you can’t find defensive minded centre backs, as bizarre as that sounds. If you want centre backs, search for ‘physically strong‘ players – luckily they make excellent centre backs.

An important thing to note is that defensive minded players don’t have amazing physical stats. Their pace, stamina, strength, etc are likely to be in the 60s rather than 70s or 80s. That isn’t disastrous for central midfielders, but is very bad for full backs where you want pace and stamina. In terms of their technical stats, defensive minded full backs are usually good at passing (short, long and crossing) as well as defensive stats like marking and tackling. That makes them useful players, but the lack of physical prowess hinders them a bit.

Defensive minded players’ stats can be quite well balanced

Defensive minded defensive midfielders are much better. Although their physical stats are middling, their strong passing and tackling abilities make them very useful ballwinners in the middle of the pitch. Although defensive minded central midfielders usually have similar stats, their OVR will be lower because they lack the dribbling skills that affect a central midfielder’s OVR rating.

So if you want a defensive minded player, a defensive midfielder is your best bet.

Goalkeeper

Sometimes when you tell a scout to look for a certain player type, he’ll find a few players of a different type. Not so with goalkeepers – you’ll only get keepers on your scout reports. That means that if you tell a scout with poor experience to look for goalkeepers, his lack of experience doesn’t matter – he’ll still only find goalkeepers.

One thing that seems to be the case with all goalkeepers found in FIFA 17 is that their positioning is worse than their other stats. Sometimes it’s within a couple of points of their other stats and other times it’s far worse, but it’s usually the worst goalkeeper stat.

Goalkeepers’ positioning is usually their worst stat and will need to be trained

That means you’ll need to do a bit of training to get the positioning up to scratch. But that’s the good thing about goalkeepers – you can train them lots and they will grow extremely quickly. Whereas outfield players often have their physical stats getting a bit stunted if they are over trained, that’s not a concern for goalkeepers, where physical stats are less important. So feel free to train your scouted goalkeepers lots if you want them to grow quickly.

Interestingly, goalkeepers can get two star skill moves, whereas real goalkeepers only get one star skill moves in FIFA 17. It’s not like in previous FIFAs where you could get keepers with five star skills, and frankly I don’t know why you’d want your goalkeeper doing tricks anyway, but it’s something to note!

Physically strong

You will find physically strong players in any central outfield position – CB, CDM, CM, CAM, CF and ST – as well as at full back.

Unsurprisingly, physically strong players usually have great physical stats. They can be both fast and strong, as well as having excellent stamina and jumping abilities. That makes them good in a number of different roles. It’s especially good in defence, where both centre backs and full backs benefit from being fast and strong. It means they’re more able to deal with a number of different opposition threats.

Physically strong full backs are both fast and strong, making them useful players

In midfield, physically strong players usually excel at tackling, with passing and distance shooting not far behind. That makes them great box-to-box midfielders, something aided by their good pace and stamina.

Finally, physically strong strikers’ best technical stats are usually their dribbling and heading. Frustratingly, though, their tackling is usually much better than their finishing, so you’ll have to do some training work to improve that. But being both pacey and strong makes them difficult to handle for opposition defenders.

Playmaker

Playmakers can be found in a number of different positions, but are best at central midfield. They usually come in two types: those who are good at passing, and those who are good at free kicks. The passing type is the best, as they will also have decent long shots and ball control ratings. The free kick specialists, meanwhile, won’t be as good at passing or other areas of their game, so generally aren’t as useful.

You can find playmaker wide players, but these are really just mispositioned central midfielders and should be played there instead. They’re not particularly fast (something common to all playmakers), and their dribbling and crossing stats aren’t particularly great. Their good passing, though, makes them useful in central midfield.

Playmakers excel at passing and free kicks, but watch out for them being mispositioned

Similarly, you can find playmaker full backs. It’s the same situation as with wide midfielders, though – low pace and stamina means they’re not very good at full back. Playmaker full backs are often good at free kicks, passing and dribbling, though, so are much better in the middle of the pitch.

Finally, it’s possible to find playmaker centre backs. Avoid these players – they have low strength, jumping and tackling, so are no good in defence. They’re mispositioned central midfielders, and should be played there.

Technically gifted

As I mentioned earlier, searching for technically gifted is one way to find strikers in FIFA 17. However, they’re not quite perfect as far as strikers go. Their pace is decent, usually in the 60s or 70s, and their dribbling is also good.

Their crossing, however, is better than their finishing. Where attacker wide players were basically strikers being played on the flanks, technically gifted strikers are the reverse – they’re wide players being played as strikers. So you’ll need to train their finishing up, but once that’s done their pace and dribbling will make them useful strikers to have.

Technically gifted players make good attacking midfielders, but their lack of pace means they’re not great on the wings

You can also find technically gifted midfielders. Technically gifted wide midfielders have fantastic ball control, and good dribbling, as well as decent free kick abilities. Their pace, though, isn’t as good as winger-type players – it’s usually in the late 60s or 70s.

For technically gifted central midfielders, that’s less of a problem. Their good dribbling and passing will come in very handy, and their relative lack of pace isn’t as much of a problem as it is on the wings.

Don’t bother with technically gifted defensive midfielders, though. They have appalling defensive stats and very little strength, so aren’t much use when it comes to winning the ball back.

Winger

The good news about winger players is that almost every one you scout will be fast. It’s not unusual to scout wingers with pace in the late 70s or even early 80s, and that will continue to grow as they develop.

You can find wingers as strikers, centre forwards and (unsurprisingly) wide players. No matter what their position is, their main technical strengths lie in their dribbling, crossing and long shots, with free kick accuracy and ball control also being good.

Unfortunately, that also applies to strikers, where their crossing is better than their finishing. That makes them similar to technically gifted strikers – they will probably play better for you on the wing, unless you train up their finishing.

Still, their pace and dribbling ability still makes them very useful attackers who can run at defenders and beat them with their dribbling skills.

Thanks for reading the FIFA 17 scouting guide. Check back for more parts soon!

What do you think of scouting in FIFA 17? Have you found any amazing players? Let us know in the comments below.

I have noticed that youth players don’t get better every month, as it was on Fifa 16. Is the “may update” back in Fifa 17? Do their stats only grow on training?
Thank you and congratulations for the guide! 🙂

In the Academy. My youth players only develop after you promote then to the squad. I wanted to know if in Fifa 17 youth players in the academy don’t grow automatically each month, as it was on Fifa 16. Or if they grow once a year (may update) as in Fifa 15. Im playing on PS4

The trick is to reload your scouting reports. Save the day before your report is due back, then advance to the next day. If you don’t get any good players on the report, quit the save, reload it and try again. You’ll get a different set of players on the report.

Sorry for the late reply! Generally speaking, technically gifted or playmaker are good ones to search for. You want players who are good at dribbling and passing, in order to create chances for themselves and the strikers.

Usually if their OVR range has a lower value in the mid 40s or higher (e.g. 47-65, 50-68, etc) then they’ll be good. You can still get good players with lower OVR ranges, but they’ll take longer to get a good OVR.

So if you have a player with, for example, 36-54 OVR range, you need to pay attention to his potential. If he’s got high potential then it might be worth keeping him. If not, discard him.

When looking for good potential, look at the upper value in the potential range. If it’s in the 90s then you’ve found a great player. The same goes for if the lower value is 70 or higher. So 70-94 is a great potential range.

Note that OVR and potential ranges will narrow down over time, giving you a better idea of how good the player is.

Thanks for the great info. Do player types have typical player heights? I’m trying to build a Guardiola Barca team so everyone needs to be 5’7. Currently trying to find a Messi with ‘winger’ – most are around 5’8. Do playemaker and technically gifted also come out small?